Can missing a show you’re due to review ever be relaxing—perhaps even fun? Answer: never. Or at least never before this afternoon’s Red Label outing.

Here’s the get-out clause—the reason that your designated reviewer’s seat was left vacant as the models pounded the parquet runway today was a virtuous one: Preshow, backstage, Dame Vivienne had spent so long talking that the models were already heading around the backboard into the pit when we were alerted to the fact that the game was afoot, and she rushed off to watch the video alongside Andreas Kronthaler. Left in backstage limbo, I got to watch the models get into their A-game as they lined up to stride into the glare of scrutiny: They danced, they smiled, they shook it off. Very notably, they also enjoyed being in this typically eclectic and borderline-heretical collection of clothing.

Watching them, this reviewer was basking in the afterglow of a great chat with the Dame. Usually she wants to bang the drum for whichever cause she has leaped upon most recently—climate change, corrupt politicians, Leonard Peltier, take your pick—but today, refreshingly, she spoke of the clothes; specifically the three days before a show when the collection is back from the factories and she’s trying to turn it into a runway persuader. Here’s some of what she said: “The collection is produced in Italy, and I don’t have much of a chance to see it [before it arrives in London]. So what happens is on day one you get there and go: ‘Oh my god we wanted this in a different color,’ and all kinds of things. You think ‘there is nothing there, what am I going to do?’ You know?”